PROaRESS OF MICROSCOPICAL SCIENCE. 29 



Influence of Temperature on Development of Fungi. — An important 

 paper on tliis subject has been read before the Vienna Academy 

 during last year by Professor Wiesner. The fungus selected was 

 PenicilUum glaucum. The germination of the spores (conidia) occurred 

 between 1"5 and 43° C, the development of the mycelium between 

 2 • 5 and 40^ C , the formation of spores between 3" and 40° C. Near 

 the upper and lower limits, the germination, the growth of myce- 

 lium, and the production of spores were uncertain. The rapidity in 

 the rate of germination increases steadily up' to 22°, and above that 

 diminishes, at first steadily, then without regularity. The rapidity of 

 mycelial growth rises continuously from the lower limit up to 26° C, 

 and then falls with more or less regularity. The maximum rapidity 

 of the production of the spores is reached at 22° C. 



Microscopic Investigations on Pycemia. — Those which have been 

 published in one of the numbers of the ' British Medical Journal ' 

 have been made by Dr. Birch-Hirschfeld, and were presented to that 

 journal by Dr. Dreschfield of Manchester. Dr. Birch-Hii-schfeld, on 

 examining daily the pus coming from a wound, found that, with the 

 ushering in of the first symptoms of pyaemia, the pus also showed a 

 corresponding change, consisting in the presence of micrococci, either 

 in pairs, strings, or colonies (the latter especially when pyaemia was 

 far advanced or i-apid in its course), and in an altered appearance of 

 the pus-corj)uscles, which were finely granular, of less definite outline 

 and lustre, and which showed their nuclei very distinctly without the 

 addition of any reagent. The blood of such pyaemic patients con- 

 tained similar micrococci, and its white corpuscles had undergone a 

 change very similar to that of the pus-corpuscles. Sometimes the pus 

 of a paemic patient would contain, besides these, a quantity of the 

 Bacterium termo or Bacterium lineola, which are the common bacteria 

 of most putrescent matter ; while micrococcus is, according to Cohn, 

 Klebs, and Hirschfeld, not to be considered the ferment of putrefac- 

 tion. Healthy pus coming from a healthy woimd or from a simple 

 abscess showed no micrococci and no altered pus-corpuscles, while 

 putrescent pus (either after exposure to air or coming from an 

 unhealthy or gangrenous wound) contained only the bacteria (termo, 

 lineola, and bacillus) due to putrefaction. The difference between 

 pyaemic and putrescent pus was now further shown by inoculations 

 on rabbits. Healthy pus, injected subcutaneously into a rabbit, gave 

 rise only to a local abscess, without any further disturbances. Putres- 

 cent pus gave the symptoms of septicaemia, as described by Bergmann, 

 Sanderson, and others — larger quantities only being fatal, and the 

 fever appearing almost immediately after injection, showing the sepsis 

 curve of Bergmann very well ; while pus from a pyasmic patient, simi- 

 larly introduced into a rabbit, gave rise to a different coui-se of symp- 

 toms. The animal remained well for five or six days ; and this period 

 was followed by one of high and intermittent fever, diarrhoea, emacia- 

 tion, and eventually and almost invariably by death from the sixteenth 

 to the twenty-fourth day. Pus, blood, and the metastatic changes in 

 such rabbits, showed again all the distinctive pysemic properties 

 described. 



